


Careening

by Zither



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Denial, Epistolary, F/F, Letters, Self-Exile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:52:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zither/pseuds/Zither
Summary: In her time away from Kirkwall, Isabela wrote Hawke several unsent letters.(They’re not love letters. Not even a little bit.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [commanderlurker (honeybee592)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybee592/gifts).



_[Scrap of parchment found in an Ostwick gutter. Only the first few lines are legible.]_

H,

~~I suppose you're expecting me to~~

~~You used to say~~

~~Do you remember the hat incident? The second one, I mean?~~

~~I told you~~

~~I'm~~

~~Look~~

H,

Look, I always knew I'd fuck it up. Don't pretend you and the others didn't.

I.

_[Found half-shredded beside a market stall, covered in footprints and fruit stains.]_

H,

I slunk off to market for some supplies today and one of the fruit-sellers ~~could have been your sister~~ looked just like you. 

Well, no; that's another lie. Her hair was longer, and I think her eyes were lighter. I know she didn't have your mouth. When she got into a knock-down knives-out mother-cursing fight with another vendor over the quality of their respective peaches, all my illusions died for good. You'd have made a decent innuendo out of it, at least.

Still. It's been on my mind all day, which is why I'm bent over a table writing this drivel instead of bent over a table doing something fun. Maybe I'll keep lists of all the people I see who remind me of you, and burn them twice-weekly.

I.

P.S. Burn the lists, not the lookalikes. Just in case anyone who comes across this thinks I'm Quentin's particular brand of murderous as well as pathetic. 

_[A partially burnt piece of paper.]_

THINGS THAT MADE ME THINK OF YOU THIS WEEK:

-scrap of red on the ground that looked like a handkerchief (it wasn't).

-a bad pun about fish.

-an even worse pun about some nobleman's funeral.

-garnet jewellery in a thief's pouch.

-two cucumbers crossed over each other on a stall.

-too many people to count.

_[Crumpled up in a ball and shoved into an old pair of torn trousers.]_

Hawke,

This is ridiculous. I've never been paranoid about magic before – any old drunken sod can get you just as good with a bottle – but I'm starting to wonder. You've written yourself into everything. Yesterday, I saw your face in three different crowds, two stolen portraits, and one oddly-shaped piece of fruit. Is there a spell for that? It's the sort of thing you'd do.

No, it's not. Those are my own sour grapes speaking; I might be a wicked liar and general untrustworthy sort, but not to the point where I can't admit that in a letter I'll burn before today is done. When I left, you let me go. You made a joke – I don't even remember what it was - waved me off, and went off back to the Hanged Man before I'd even finished boarding. Two of your ribs hadn't quite healed up yet; I saw you stop and put a hand to your side once you thought you'd made it round the corner. By then, they were pulling the gangplank up. I had a crewman once who got cold feet after glimpsing his lover on land and threw himself over the railing. He regretted it once we'd pulled him out, but I wasn't just furious. I was bewildered. What the hell sort of demon had possessed him to do it? I asked, and he couldn't explain. He's long dead now, but his demons must have been catching. Despite knowing all too well what it feels like to dive from a ship's rail into icy, oily, piss-laced harbour water, I couldn't shake the image of myself doing just that. Hopping the rail, thrashing back to shore as fast as I could, and flinging my smelly, damp arms around you (which wouldn't have helped your ribs out one bit). I didn't, of course. You know I didn't.

You're not as special as I think you are. I bet there are any number of apostates who can do the hot-left-hand/cold-right-hand trick.

I don't know. Whatever this is, it's my problem.

Isabela.

_[Tucked inside an abridged copy of the Chant of Light.]_

Hawke,

Speaking of sex.

I suppose we weren't. Alluding to sex, Varric would say, which is one of my favourite things in the world to do outside actual non-allusive sex. You once accused me of doing it to wriggle out of real, actual, serious conversations about feelings, and I suppose you were right. Not that you're one to talk; it's still a better escape strategy than joking about your dead loved ones until everybody leaves.

But. Speaking of sex: I miss it, even though I've had more than enough to satisfy on my fleeing fugitive tour of every Free Marches city that isn't Kirkwall. Or, rather, I miss some unfairly addictive combination of sex and you. Fucking is fun no matter who you're with, but I have all the specifics of you stuck in my head. The way you'd hurry to get my tunic off, so fast you fumbled the laces more often than not, and then pull me down to lie against you while you mouthed along my jaw like you could wait forever. That sound you made the first time I pulled you into my lap. How you'd moan into my neck when you slid a finger up into me and found me wet, as if I were the one giving it to you. Your hair got so messy afterward, no matter how many times you tried to make it lie flat. I can't get that out of my head, either.

Even the awkward moments, the ones I'd try to forget with anyone else... those stick with me, too. Like the hiccup incident. I had you pinned, three fingers stretching you out while you drew circles on your own clit. You were grinding down against me, so slick and hot and close, whispering absolute filth... and then you got the hiccups. There I was, up to my knuckles in you while you rode a storm of spasms so violent they shook you from the inside out. Getting you a drink only made it worse. We were both laughing too much to go on by then, so we just sat in bed and discussed our next foray along the coast until I realised it was getting a bit too domestic and made an excuse to leave.

It's all very stupid.

Isabela.

_[Fished out of the Cumberland city harbour. Surprisingly intact.]_

Hawke,

I thought about telling you, all right?

If I'd done it early enough, it might even have gone well. The Hawke I met when I first washed up would have been halfway to Ostwick with me before I could say _So a pirate captain, a Qunari leader, and a priceless book walk into a political clusterfuck..._ By the time I realised that, it was too late. You'd caught an incurable case of civic duty (or, if you're asking me and not Aveline, a death wish). Family duty, too. You'd never have agreed to leave without your mother and brother, for all that they drove you up the wall eight days out of seven. And then there were the others. Fenris wouldn't have wanted to uproot himself again; he enjoys living surrounded by mushrooms and bones far too much. Merrill gets lost often enough in Kirkwall after six years. I knew Aveline would insist on bringing Donnic along as well, and have you seen the way that man eats? He'd never survive on a few barrels of hard tack and salt fish.

That's the trouble. People are like burrs; you never come home with just one stuck to your boot. It's always a great big clump of the things, and they're all attached to each other as well as to you, so you get the boot-scraper and end up taking half the shine off along with them. Or something like that. I'm not sure this “adding in more extended metaphors and similes that aren't obscene” exercise Varric suggested is working out for me, so I give up. You don't have to believe me (won't believe me), but it's the truth. I never wanted to leave you behind. I just wanted to get away.

Isabela.

_[Stuck to the bar in a Dragons' Den tavern.]_

Hawke,

Remember the exploding shipwreck?

I suppose I should be more specific. Remember that wild goose chase I dragged you on just before the truth came out and the Arishok tried to stick a sword through your heart? My source said she'd heard second-hand the book might (maybe, perhaps, possibly) be there, and I was getting desperate. For a whole eyeblink, I thought things were looking up. The chest wasn't even locked!

Of course some tit had gone and put a curse on it. We were in Kirkwall, or close enough. Corpses popped out of the floors, demons came groaning out of the walls – you know how it goes. I took one down with a throwing knife, stopped another with my daggers, spun to cover you - and heard you start to giggle. “You could say” - but you were laughing too hard to speak, and then one of the undead cut you off with a fireball. When the smoke cleared, you went on: “You could say the ship turned out to have a... skeleton crew.” We were halfway out of the wreck before you stopped snickering.

I think I would have had you then and there if we'd been alone, or standing in front of a more appreciative audience. Aveline already looked like you'd force-fed her a whole lemon tree, and Sebastian – well, to be fair, I think Sebastian might have been trying to keep a straight face. Hard to tell, with him.

You're so bloody _funny_. Maybe not to our stuffier friends (naming no names), but you made me cry with laughter the first night we met and that was well after you surprised Hayder with a lightning bolt to the skull. Of course, I laugh at all your jokes even when they're really, truly shitty and as all-around unamusing as a Qunari greatsword to the sternum. What does that say about me? Nothing good, I think.

Isabela.

_[Found underneath the wardrobe in Hawke's bedroom.]_

Hawke,

I'm sailing back to Kirkwall as a passenger. Embarrassing. It was bad enough on the way out, but I was so desperate to leave it almost didn't matter. Now I have time to dwell on what it means to call myself the Queen of the Eastern Seas when I haven't had a ship of my own for over half a decade. But it's faster than taking a carriage overland and gives me fewer chances to cut and run. (Fewer, not zero.)

There's so little to do on a ship when you're not part of the crew. A few of the others offered themselves up to the captain as extra hands, but I knew better; when you've a full complement already, the last thing you want is strangers underfoot upsetting whatever fragile balance keeps them from brawling on deck because one of them looked at somebody else sideways. Though merchant sailors aren't pirates, and this lot don't even seem to drink that much. Maybe I just need an excuse to stare at the sea and brood on how to break the bad news of my return to our Most Glorious Champion and All-Around Dashing Hero, Lady Hawke.

I've thought about it, you know. How to work this. Do I start a barfight (it worked so well the first time)? Pass notes through our friends and simper into my drink every time you look at me? Sing underneath your library window until you send the dog out to chase me off? I should have brought a gift back from my travels, but nothing I could've bought or stolen in the Cumberland merchant district screamed “sorry for almost getting you killed in a duel you should never have had to fight in the first place”.

In the meantime, I write friend fiction about devilishly attractive pirates and gorgeous silver-tongued apostates on my last few pieces of parchment. No, you can't read it. 

Maybe I'll let you read this, though. If the mages and templars and other assorted fighty folk get their way, it might not even matter in a year or two.

Isabela.

_[Scrunched up next to the previous note.]_

Isabela,

Get yourself up to my house right now. We can talk it out later.

Yours in Mutual Shiplessness,  
Most Glorious Champion and All-Around Dashing Hero, Hawke

P.S. Please bring the friend fiction.


End file.
